Ford Excursion Brake Upgrades for Towing

By Core Brake Parts Tech Team — Circleville, OH warehouse

A Ford Excursion with a trailer behind it asks more of its brakes than almost anything else in a family driveway. The upgrades that pay off, in order, are a higher-temperature friction material, a rotor that sheds heat and pad gas, fluid with real boiling headroom, and hoses that do not swell under a hard pedal. None of it requires a larger caliper.

Why towing overwhelms a stock Excursion brake system

Brakes turn motion into heat and get rid of it. An Excursion already carries a lot of mass, and a trailer adds more without adding a single square inch of friction surface. On a long grade the brakes never get a chance to cool, so heat moves out of the pad into the rotor, out of the rotor into the caliper, and finally into the fluid in the piston bore. Each of those has a temperature at which it quits, and the first tow up a mountain pass is usually when an owner finds out where that ceiling is.

The Excursion applications we fit use disc brakes at all four corners, so both axles can be improved the same way.

Symptoms, and how to tell them apart

Owner reports filed with NHTSA for the Excursion describe repeatedly warped front rotors, calipers that stick and chew through pads and rotors in a few thousand miles, hydraulic lines corroded badly enough to lose fluid, and a plastic wheel well liner resting against a metal brake line and wearing through it. Those are different problems with different fixes:

• Pedal goes long and soft after repeated stops, then returns once it cools. Fluid fade. The fluid boiled and the pedal is compressing vapor. Fluid problem, not a pad problem.
• Pedal stays firm but the truck will not slow properly. Pad fade. The friction material is past its working temperature.
• Pedal or steering wheel pulses under braking. Usually uneven friction material deposited on the rotor face, not a bent rotor. This is what most people mean by warped.
• One wheel runs hot, one pad is thin, or the truck pulls. Sticking caliper or seized slide pins. Fix that before buying anything else.

Inspect the flexible hoses and hard lines before you spend money on friction. A cracked hose or a rust-scabbed line undoes every other upgrade on the truck.

Pads: what an extra-duty material changes

A towing pad is not a racing pad. It has to hold a stable coefficient of friction while hot and keep doing it through thousands of miles of ordinary driving between trips. EBC builds its Extra Duty line for exactly that. Per EBC, the pads use aramid fibers with a small amount of steel fiber in a carbon granule based formula, described as fade-free across a wide operational range and tested at 400 degrees C / 750 degrees F. The backing plates use NUCAP NRS hook technology, which EBC rates at five times the bond strength of a conventional pad. EBC states the intended use plainly: towing, heavy loads, and trucks with lifted suspension and oversized tires and wheels, where a standard stock brake system cannot cope.

We stock the EBC Extra Duty front brake pad set ED91308 for the 2000-2002 Excursion 5.4L 2WD and the matching Extra Duty rear pad set ED91603. Do both axles; aggressive front pads with tired rears just move the heat problem forward. More choices are in our brake pad catalog.

Bed them in or none of it counts. EBC's instruction for Extra Duty is to let the pads seat to the rotors with normal urban driving, then after 600 to 800 miles follow with 15 medium to heavy brake applications. Do that before you hook up a trailer, not after.

Rotors: slots, dimples, and getting heat out

The rotor is the heat sink, and the gas that builds between a hot pad and the disc face is part of what costs you bite. EBC's GD Sport answer is wide aperture slots and blind-drilled holes to remove gases and debris and reduce the risk of cracking. That distinction matters on a truck that lives hot: a blind dimple degasses the pad without punching a through hole for a crack to start from. EBC describes the third-generation design as helping the discs run cooler, promoting even pad wear, and clearing dirt, mud, water and dust from the braking surface, precision machined in the UK from R90-approved blanks.

The BSD rotor takes a different route. EBC describes a unique blade slot design combined with bi-directional fine slots that improves gas evacuation and draws heat away from the central brake pad area, made from G3000-spec cast iron.

For the 2000-2005 Excursion 5.4L 4WD we carry the EBC GD7083 3GD sport slotted front rotor set, the USR7083 fine slotted front set, and the BSD7083 V-slot front rotors. For 2000-2002 5.4L 2WD trucks there is a matching GD7189 sport slotted rear rotor set. Check your year, engine and drive configuration against the listing, then browse brake rotors.

Brake fluid is the real fade ceiling

This is the cheapest upgrade on the truck and the one most owners skip. Brake fluid is hygroscopic: it pulls moisture from the air over years of service, and water lowers its boiling point. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 116 sets the floor for each grade.

Read that as a tow driver. Fluid that has sat in an Excursion for a decade is closer to the wet column than the dry one, and the wet minimum for DOT 3 is only 284 degrees F - a caliper dragging a loaded trailer down a grade reaches that. Flush with fresh fluid of the grade specified on your master cylinder cap and in the factory service literature, before a towing season rather than after a scare. Do not mix grades or put a silicone fluid into a system not built for one.

Lines, hardware, and what to do at the same time

Flexible hose expands under pressure, and that expansion is pedal travel you paid for and did not get. Brake hose assemblies are regulated under FMVSS 106, which requires DOT certification marking, a type designation of HR for regular expansion or HL for low expansion, and testing that includes 4,000 psi of water pressure for two minutes without rupture plus 35 hours of continuous whip testing. Any hose you put on a street truck should carry that DOT mark. Lifted Excursions have a second problem: at full droop, stock-length hoses run out of slack. We carry the Russell stainless braided brake line kit 696490 for 1999-2006 Excursion 4WD with a 4 to 5.5 inch lift, which solves length and expansion together. See more in brake lines.

While the wheels are off:

• Replace pads and rotors as a set, per axle. New pads on a grooved rotor never bed evenly.
• Fit fresh brake hardware - clips, shims and abutment slides. Old clips bind pads and cause wear people blame on the friction.
• Clean and regrease the caliper slide pins with a high-temperature brake lubricant; replace torn boots.
• Flush the fluid and bleed each corner until it runs clear.
• Inspect every hard line and hose for corrosion and for anything rubbing.
• Torque caliper bracket bolts, caliper bolts and lug nuts to the factory service manual values. Do not guess on a vehicle this heavy.

Difficulty: pads and rotors are a two to three hour job per axle with a jack, stands and a torque wrench. A fluid flush adds an hour. A line kit takes longest, since every fitting is a candidate for a snapped line - have a flare nut wrench and penetrating oil ready, and hand a corroded hard line to a shop. Everything here is in our brake parts catalog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need bigger brakes on an Excursion to tow safely?

Usually not. Most Excursion towing complaints trace to a worn or overheated stock system rather than one that is too small. Better friction material, a slotted rotor, fresh fluid and sound hoses recover most of what the truck lost, and they bolt on.

Are slotted rotors worth it, or will they eat my pads?

EBC's case for slots is even pad wear, cooler running, and clearing debris and gas from the pad face, using blind-drilled holes that it says reduce the risk of cracking compared with through drilling. Paired with the right pad, a slotted rotor is a sound towing choice. Expect a little more slot noise than a plain face.

How often should I change brake fluid on a truck that tows?

Follow the interval in your Ford service literature, and treat it as a maximum if you tow. The FMVSS 116 wet minimum for DOT 3 is 284 degrees F against a 401 degrees F dry minimum, and that gap is the difference between a firm pedal and a long one at the bottom of a grade.

Are there open brake recalls on the Ford Excursion?

NHTSA recall data for the Excursion lists campaigns covering the speed control deactivation switch, a diesel camshaft position sensor, a wiper motor cover, a headlamp switch knob, aftermarket wheel hub assemblies, and a multi-function switch that can keep turn signals, tail lights, hazards and brake lights from activating. No base hydraulic brake campaign is listed. Run your VIN through NHTSA to confirm.

Sources

1. EBC Brakes - Extra Duty Light Truck, Jeep and SUV Brake Pads - pad material, 400 C / 750 F figure, NUCAP NRS bond claim, towing use, bed-in
2. EBC Brakes Direct - GD Series Sport Disc Set - aperture slots, blind-drilled holes and crack risk, R90 blanks, cooling and pad wear claims
3. EBC Brakes Direct - BSD Sport Series Disc - blade slot and bi-directional slot gas evacuation, G3000-spec cast iron
4. NHTSA owner complaint database - Ford Excursion - warped rotors, sticking calipers, corroded lines, liner chafing
5. NHTSA recall database - Ford Excursion - campaigns on file, no base hydraulic brake campaign
6. FMVSS 116, 49 CFR 571.116 (govinfo) - DOT 3 and DOT 4 dry and wet boiling minimums
7. FMVSS 106, 49 CFR 571.106 (govinfo) - hose DOT marking, HR and HL, burst and whip tests